The archive has now been nominated to the UN agency UNESCO to become part of the Memory of the World Register, as a piece of written cultural heritage of great value to humanity.
The Taj Mahal in India, the waterborne city of Venice and the dizzying heights of the Grand Canyon are examples of World Heritage Sites designated by UNESCO, the UN's cultural agency. UNESCO is also working on other ways to preserve cultural heritage – Memory of the World.
Memory of the World is an honour given to an archive or library deemed to be of great value to humanity. Previously announced Memories of the World include Beethoven’s manuscripts and the Diary of Anne Frank. A historical narrative treasure in Lund may soon join them in achieving UN recognition.
“We have been campaigning since 2014 for the Ravensbrück Archive to receive this honour and have now been told that we have been nominated. For the voices from the Ravensbrück extermination camp to be given a special place for future generations who will not have the opportunity to meet Holocaust survivors would be hugely important,” says Håkan Håkansson, who led the work to make the archive digitally accessible.
“The Holocaust matters to everyone”
The Ravensbrück Archive consists of 500 in-depth interviews with Holocaust survivors who arrived in Sweden on Folke Bernadotte's White Buses during the spring of 1945. Most of the survivors came from Ravensbrück, but many had also served time in other concentration camps. The archive also includes personal belongings such as letters, photographs, notebooks and drawings donated by survivors.
“The archive is the only one of its kind in the world. Since the digitised archive opened to the public in autumn 2017, the Witnessing genocide digital portal has had around 10,000 unique visitors per year. In the context of archives, that is a very large number,” says Håkan Håkansson.
Visitors come from virtually all over the world. The number of requests from, for example, schools and researchers, but also relatives of Holocaust survivors, for access to the material is increasing year by year. This makes the Ravensbrück Archive one of the most in demand and heavily used archives in Europe.
“As survivors become fewer and fewer, documenting their voices becomes more important, not least for a younger generation for whom the Holocaust may seem so distant as to be irrelevant. The archives and testimonies remind us how fragile democracy can be; how quickly the moral foundations of a society can crumble,” says Håkan Carlsson, library director of Lund University Library.
The nomination process to become a Memory of the World has several stages. The World Heritage Committee in Sweden receives proposals for nominations and selects candidates. The selected institution, in this case the Ravensbrück Archive, makes an application together with the World Heritage Committee. The application is forwarded by the World Heritage Committee to the Swedish UNESCO Council, which decides whether to nominate the proposal to UNESCO. UNESCO will in turn decide upon new additions to the Memory of the World Register in April 2025.
If the decision is favourable, the Ravensbrück Archives will receive a Memory of the World designation, joining the Swedish Freedom of the Press Ordinance was designated in 2023. The Tirén Archive has also been nominated.
“The Holocaust is not just something for certain individuals and particular groups. The Holocaust is about what happens to us when we dehumanise others. The responsibility to keep its memory alive is therefore something we all share, today more than ever,” says Erik Renström, Vice-Chancellor of Lund University.
See the digital archive and learn more: Witnessing genocide
